"Every week, like the Road Runner, she escapes the Coyote," says Washington's Susan Orlins, referring to her daughter, Eliza, a Sidwell Friends graduate who will continue her scrabble for that $1 million booty on tonight's episode of CBS's "Survivor: Vanuatu." Apparently Eliza Orlins, 21, has a bit of a reputation among fellow contestants. "They don't much like her," mom told us yesterday. "They said Eliza talks too much. Funny, I think talking too much is good. I talk too much."

Except when a confidentiality agreement required Susan Orlins, a 58-year-old writer, to keep mum about her surprise visit in July to see her daughter on Vanuatu, a South Pacific island near Fiji. (The episode was televised Thanksgiving Day.) "I'm a very bad liar," claims Orlins, who had to keep friends and family in the dark: "I said I was going to Asia."

The younger Orlins beat out six other contestants for what they thought would be a videoconference link to a family member but turned out to be an overnight visit. By that time, the contestants had suffered nearly a month-long shortage of food, clothing, toiletries and maternal affection. "As soon as they got near me they were touching me and smelling me," Orlins recalls. "It was really weird." Happily, mother and daughter got some quality time, albeit on camera.

"I would have tried to stuff some Snickers in my bra," says Orlins, ever the dutiful mom, but with Eliza planning to attend law school after her May graduation from Syracuse University, why endanger her shot at that cool million?

I don't understand why Eliza needs the money. She comes from a wealthy family and she is planning on being a lawyer. If she does get to the end, good luck to whomever is with her. I imagine it would be difficult to get a word in edgewise against a "chatterbox," pre-law student.